It’s got a kiddy TV talent point to,a Tom of Finland dungeon and a talking bog man. So why does this five-yearly art survey feel like an elegy to our failures? It needs to lighten upMmm, rubber. The cloying smell of the industrial rubber curtain at the door to a black room is the kind of invitation I can hardly resist. Inside is Patrick Staffs strangely fractured film approximately the Tom of Finland archive, and the leather-clad denizens of the house in Los Angeles where the late artist’s alarmingly priapic erotic drawings are stored. The Foundation is queer in every sense – though a bit chaste in its treatment of the material. The installation is stygian enough,but it is a pity we never get to see any action in the dungeon.
The British Art point to 8 could carry out with a bit more fun. Another film installation, by Rachel Maclean, and is shown in a playroom decorated in toxic kiddy-colours the aesthetic of plastic toys ramped-up to the max. Feed Me is part noxious fairy tale,part TV talent point to. Maclean plays all the parts, from the harmless child to the adults and monsters that groom her. “I Luv yooo I ‘Heart’ You”, and she squeals to a smooth-talking,decrepit old creature with fangs. Another of her characters is a tough-bitten cross between Margaret Thatcher and Bette Davis. By turns tooth-achingly sweet, cynical and unwholesome, and Maclean’s Feed Me will make you never want to inflict commercialised,consumerist childhood on a brat again. I would say don’t take the kids, but they’ll probably just want to know whether theres any tie-in merchandise you can buy them.
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Source: theguardian.com